Babies Born To Singles Are at Record: Nearly 4 in 10

Published: November 22, 2006

Out-of-wedlock births in the United States, on the rise since the late 1990s, have now climbed to a record high, accounting for nearly 4 in 10 babies born last year, government health officials said Tuesday.

But while such births have long been associated with teenage mothers, the number among 10- to 17-year-olds actually dropped last year -- as did that group's overall birthrate, to the lowest level on record.

Instead, births among unwed mothers rose most sharply among women in their 20s.

''A lot of people think of teenagers and unmarried mothers synonymously, but they are not driving this,'' said Stephanie J. Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics, a co-author of the report.

The report is drawn from information in 99 percent of birth certificates filed last year in the United States. The data are considered preliminary, but officials said they were not expected to change much.

They show that about 4.1 million babies were born in the United States last year, up slightly from 2004, and that more than 1.5 million were to unmarried women. That is about 37 percent of the total, up about one percentage point from the year before.

Experts said the continuing increase reflected the growing number of people who put off marriage or who decide to live with their partners without marrying. Having a child out of wedlock, the experts noted, is no longer the source of shame it once was.

Further, said Dr. Yolanda Wimberly, an adolescent-medicine specialist at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, the biological clock is causing more women in their 30s and 40s to choose childbirth despite being single.

The government also reported that the rate of births by Caesarean delivery continued to climb in 2005, to a record high, despite efforts by public health authorities to bring it down.

Many experts maintain that a large number of Caesarean sections are medically unnecessary, performed only for the convenience of the mother or her doctor.

The report said last year's increase in births to unwed mothers occurred among all racial groups but was steepest among Hispanics. Such births were also up among all age groups except women 10 to 17.

But Ms. Ventura, the co-author, said a mother's unwed status did not mean the father was not around. She cited 2002 statistics showing that about 20 percent of all new mothers younger than 20 were unmarried but living with the father at the time of the birth. The same was true of about 13 percent of all new mothers ages 20 to 24.

According to census figures, the median age at first marriage was 27 for men and 25 for women last year, up from 23 and 20 in 1950. Meanwhile, the number of unmarried-couple households with children has been climbing, reaching more than 1.7 million last year, up from fewer than 200,000 in 1970.